


the secret history

by pewpewpewpew



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Museum Guard!Bellamy, New York City, a little bit free association, chance encounter, strangers to ??? something idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-16 03:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20182945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pewpewpewpew/pseuds/pewpewpewpew
Summary: “i had spent dozens of hours studying the photographs as though if i stared at them long enough and longingly enough i would, by some sort of osmosis, be transported into their clear, pure silence.”― donna tarttIt was like slipping into an ethereal plain detached from the rest of the world; . . . in each work of art, Murphy discovered another piece of himself, and by the end of it he was nearly a whole person again.





	the secret history

**Author's Note:**

> <strike>what if we kissed in the ancient greek & roman exhibit of the met?</strike>
> 
> there are 3,570 words in this fic and 44 of them are —, ;, or :. ending sentences properly? i'm sorry i don't know her. thanks so much for reading and being patient with all the purple prose and whatnot, i had a lot of fun writing this(:

John Murphy was on his way home when the storm fell in.

He watched the midevening light recede from the sky; it darkened and then wept, gently at first, sporadic brown spots ― as big as dimes ― dancing haphazardly across the pavement. The world seemed to pause, and the black clouds hung in the air and the atmosphere felt crisp and cool in the dull heat of August and then, all at once, it came down.

Around him, Fifth Avenue unfurled. Across the streets, artists ran to cover their paintings with plastic. A coffee vendor pulled down the shutters on his cart. The people of New York scattered, panicked, holding briefcases and shopping bags over their heads as sweeps of cold rain blew in sideways, broad gusts of wind clawed incessantly at neckties, newspapers, nylons. They ducked into brightly-lit chain stores with opulent chandeliers, skeevy thrift shops that smelled like spices the world could never quite reproduce outside of the city.

Murphy was drenched before he looked up and realized he’d been swallowed and carried by a large throng of tourists, clambering over a steep slope of stairs and buzzing now under the dripping portico of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Pairs of Grecian columns stretched high on either side of him, flowering and curling above and driving a sort of impatience through his chest. Most pedestrians pushed past him ― out of the rain and into dazzling glass and golden-wrought covings ― but a few were content to plop to the shaded stone outside, catching their breath in the cool mists of the torrent rains.

Ideally, John would have been, too; he gazed gloomily out across the hazy fuzz of Fifth Avenue, listening to the persistent hissing drizzle against the street. He wallowed in the terrible longing of a hot shower back at his apartment for at least twenty minutes before he caved. Well, _fine_. If the universe was so determined to keep him there, he’d might as well wait it out over a coffee or something.

Inside, the Great Hall was loud and heavy with the stench of wet dog, and the sudden atmosphere of the crowd rubbing drenched shoulders made Murphy’s skin crawl. He moved through the pay-as-you-wish booth with remarkable ease, pushed a ten-dollar note to a woman with a white smile, and hung an immediate left for relief from the horde and room to breathe, breathe, breathe. Regretfully, it occurred to him that the Wing and Court Cafés would be almost certainly packed, and as used to that as he was as a resident of New York freaking City ― the prospect of it now seemed alarmingly abhorrent. Instead he plunged blindly forth, lights swimming against marble and his shoes squeaking with every step, towards what he hoped would be a decent way to kill time.

Murphy had only ever been in the Met once before, on a social excursion with coworker Raven Reyes and a friend of hers ― a not-so-subtle attempt to set him up, Monty Green. He’d understood what was going on the moment he’d spotted the “spontaneous” tag-along and the innocent glint in Rayes’s eyes, but Monty must not have figured it out until later, when she innocuously excused herself to the American exhibit and left the two of them alone in Arms and Armor. The other boy had mumbled a sheepish apology and vanished into a noisy band of middle schoolers passing through. Poor guy.

From his position, now, the crowds had thinned considerably the deeper in he pushed, but John was still among the very few guests without any company at all. The halls seemed to possess a silent authority about them, a sort of strict but disarming demand to be respected. Gladly, he conceded, making a distinct mental note to visit the cool and quiet corridors more often. He was determined already to enjoy himself (_you deserve it every now and then, right_? Raven would have said), but he needn’t have been; the museum swept him into white lounges furnished with crawling green vines, rolling apples and bubbling grapes carved into the walls. It was impossible to _not _wander aimlessly, excitedly.

He stumbled into the Greek and Roman exhibit in-between waves of patrons, the main hall deserted apart from a small group of girl scouts marching dutifully along. The area was huge; tall, limbless monuments gazing mournfully down in shades of immaculate ivory, offset by the polished ornate floors as black and sweet as sin. Murphy’s eyes fell upon the broad, delicate fountain at the center of it all ― faces frozen in time, the waters within clear and sparkling with copper pennies. If not for the rain spattering on the high glass roof above, John thought, vaguely, he might not have ever pulled his gaze from the basin at all.

But he did; he fought the sudden urge to whirl, staring into the open cold eyes of each figure (limestone, bronze, gold, silver). He wanted to see them _all_, and then see them all again, and then ― and then ―

John Murphy stopped. His hand, long, thin fingers paused just inches before the jaw of a naked woman lazily draped in a feather-light peplos, its creases rolling like loose waves. But he hadn’t been looking at _her_, his head swiveling back and forth. He’d been looking between sets of open, cold eyes, but _those_. Those of the man standing maybe twenty feet away, toffee and round and deep and dark.

Those were anything but ancient history.

“No touching, please,” he was saying. His face was stern, but his body composure was lax and unmistakably bored, and he sounded a bit tired. His voice echoed in the empty space.

For a moment, he thought he’d misheard. Murphy’s mind fizzled, halting and uncertain and, “What?”

“The statues. No touching.”

John watched the stranger shift impatiently, wordlessly throwing his chin towards the helpless woman staring down at the floor and the tips of Murphy’s fingers, hovering just above the frozen flesh. A badge glinted against the dusky, unassuming navy of his suit jacket, crimson tie tucked neatly against his chest.

A guard’s uniform. He was a part of the guard.

“Oh.” Yeah, _oh_,_ shit._

As quickly as though the statue were suddenly made of glowing iron, Murphy snapped his hand back, letting his arm fall. He didn’t remember raising it to begin with, and he likely hadn’t meant to actually touch her. Probably.

“Sorry,” he thought to say, peering through the overcast light to see him better. The man was tall, and comparably quite tan in the face of marble skins. A black and somewhat unkempt mess of curls framed his dark eyes.

On any other day, perhaps this would have been the end of the interaction; a curt nod of acknowledgement, John could move surreptitiously through the crowds in his embarrassment, and the two would never speak again. But as it stood, the room was perfectly vacant and, hell, he’d feel so cheap ducking out now.

And, really, if he were being honest with himself: he wanted to stay.

Murphy was still mulling it over when the man’s hands lifted from his belt and, within only a few slow strides, they were standing a mere two feet apart. Silently, the guard gently tugged to loosen the knot at his neck, and his features edged into a slight grin. “That’s okay,” he said, craning his neck to gaze up at her with a distinct admiration; “I think she’s my favorite here, too.”

If Murphy was unsure before if this woman was indeed his favorite among the statues, he was certain now.

He contemplated this for a moment, allowing himself to take this one in, slower than his frenzied exploration had been earlier. Each detail was clean and smooth and suddenly he understood his subconscious desire to reach out and brush his fingers along the stone.

“She looks a bit too good to be true, doesn’t she?” asked Murphy, breathlessly. His eyes, blue and dewy from the barrage of water outside, flickered over her barren breasts and empty wrists. It seemed like a strange thing to say, and almost at once after the words had left his lips, John wished he could take them back.

But the man to his left seemed unperturbed and fixated exclusively on her desolate expression. He only shrugged. “She makes me feel better, in some obscure way.”

_Fair enough_.

A few moments of silence, of standing glued to the same spot, passed before Murphy became aware of the small puddle forming beneath his feet ― around the same time the guard must have, because he frowned watching a drop of rain roll down his pale nose.

“I think guests are asked to leave wet overcoats in the Great Hall,” he recited, but his voice held a strangely teasing charm.

The comment took John aback. He coughed. “I, uh. Didn’t expect to be here this long.”

“That’s a shame,” said B ― Bellamy? was that what was engraved across his badge? ― said _Bellamy_, and he sounded sincere, an inflection of raw disappointment; _but what about the decorative arts of Oceania? _and _this month is Rembrandt, i think_. Murphy searched his face, digesting the Roman curve of his nose, the carve of his jawline. _Another piece of work to admire_, and suddenly he felt guilty for staring. “Have you been to see the roof gardens?”

He hadn’t, but he’d heard nice things; a rich, pristine green lawn, petals and colors and lights spilling over pails. It was the sort of thing that a strange part of him had long-since decided wasn’t meant for him, that he’d feel too much like an invasive species. Treading on grounds unbidden.

Bellamy cocked his head. “You want to?”

― ♗ ―

His shift ended ten minutes later, during which time Murphy felt free to wander in and out of the displays as he waited, listening aptly to the sound of the guard’s low, hushed tone humming eagerly on about Greek tragedies and their latent-slash-repressed homosexuality. John was certainly happy enough to listen, but despite his focus on the stranger’s voice, he’d somehow missed a great deal of the words themselves to the rains, falling in sheets over them. Occasionally, he’d interject with appropriate remarks or a startled laugh, but he genuinely felt content to browse like a tourist through busts of _Octavia the Younger_, stained-glass windows spilling stormy shades of crimsons and blues and golden crowns. Throwing in a story or question or two of his own;

( _“Bellerophon,” the man had responded, his face entirely serious. John fit him with a bland expression, tilted a brow._

_“Your badge says ‘Bellamy.’” _

_“It’s a regional dialect.”_ )

― by the time Bell-_whatever _uncrossed his arms and ran his hand through his hair, the tempest still surged diligently forth, reduced to a remorseful drizzle one moment and tearing violently through the next. John tilted back his head, watched it patter on the glass above. Dizzily, he glanced back, frowning.

“Another time,” said Murphy, in the same breath Bellamy asked, “You ready?”

Well, okay, _sure_.

The journey towards the roofs was long, but no less pleasant; the elevators were on the opposite side of the museum to begin with, but John had a sneaking suspicion he was being led the scenic route. Not that he was complaining. He was mesmerized ― _spellbound_ ― by fine metals and oils, parchment creamy beneath hollow bones or a lonely sea of ink. Bellamy, contrary to his expectations, didn’t seem bored of the exhibits, but rather allowed himself to be devoured by each piece as though it were his first time seeing it. Portraits of a bacchanal, of women and men singing, screaming ― dancing barefoot in the woods, in the dead of night. Vines of thin golden leaves climbing along limbs long and naked. Bronze sculptures of bulls bellowing, springs of honey bubbling from the earth. It was like slipping into an ethereal plain detached from the rest of the world; a labyrinth where Saturn devoured his children and Dr. Nicolaes Tulp delivered his lessons. In each work of art, Murphy discovered another piece of himself, and by the end of it he was nearly a whole person again.

When he pulled himself at last from the dizzying shroud of colors on plaster on roots and clouds, Bellamy was standing a few feet away, stoic, before a perplexing painting with a ruminative look on his face. John wandered beside him, ignoring the startled shift of the guard’s form, and discerned with some difficulty the tiny golden plaque affixed to the wall beside of it.

_The Lovers Whirlwind_, 1827

**WILLIAM BLAKE**

“I thought William Blake was a poet,” Murphy muttered, distinctly proud of his ability to rummage through thirteen years of easy-peasy Trigonometry classes and failed reading tests to uncover what amounted to only a few broken lines of hazy rhythm; _Tyger! Tyger! burning bright_ _. . . _― (well, whatever. it wasn’t as though mr. tyger tyger was going to be winning any spelling bees, either.) Silently, he noted with a dim clarity that the painting itself was a sort of poem, in itself. The dark, long bodies of paramours entangled and swept into mournful silver columns, curls of women begging their insidious partners to stay. _A thousand more . . . whom love bereav’d of life._

Bellamy hummed appreciatively, absentmindedly, and Murphy followed his warm gaze over Virgil proud in the corner and the neat white scribble hidden at the bottom of it all. HELL. _Canto 5_. “He was,” he agreed. “Sometimes he just— couldn’t find the right words.” He glanced, subtly, back, but whatever exactly the meaningful gesture was supposed to _mean_ went over Murphy’s head. He tore his gaze away. 

The elevators were nearby and made almost exclusively of glass, buffed and polished to a stainless, fingerprint-free clarify. Inside, his wet boots squeaked on the floor and the machines whirled unpleasantly, but a silence hung awkwardly between them still. Strangers gliding on a whim towards what was undoubtedly the soggiest of the exhibits. (Un)fortunately, Murphy wasn’t feeling as uncomfortable as he thought he ought to have been; too easily occupied by the rose-water fragrance of the small space and the marble tiles under his feet and the way the guard’s eyes squinted when his lips pulled into a broad smile and —

The world tilted with a sudden jolt beneath him and the elevator chirped happily. **RG**. _Rooftop Garden. _

Bellamy whistled as the doors parted and a gust of wind swept sprays of rain towards them; the skies fell in determined, lazy strokes, cool splashes of a wet heat. The summer pressed against his skin and for a moment it felt unfair to think of the weather as miserably as he had earlier. Stepping out into it — into the subdued brightness of a hidden sun, the neat lawns green and fertile — drove Murphy to some rapid onset of insatiability. To breathe in every gasp of the misted air, to let the way the atmosphere smelled after rain burn into his memory. 

“What, no umbrella?” Murphy called as the other marched bravely forth, stepping out from under the patio and into rain, rain, rain. A few umbrellas bobbed behind him — a woman in a petticoat here, a young boy wearing sunglasses there. Most were scurrying towards the various elevators scattered across the rooftop. Bellamy was drenched within seconds. 

“No umbrella,” he confirmed, water sticking to his tan face, pinning dark curls to his skin. He blinked through heavy lashes at him. “You’re soaked anyway. Who cares?”

And, Murphy thought, if going into the museum hadn’t been to avoid the rain in the first place, it would have made sense to plunge gladly into it now. As it stood, he felt happy — just, _happy_ — for no discernible reason at all. Foriegn. 

The chill was inviting, surface-level. His fingers glowed with warmth and his breath came in hollow clouds, in August!, when he exhaled. It was surreal; the two moved unseen through glass structures idly glinting in the grey overcast, under ropes of dark ivy dripping from broad trees and full crimson petals dancing along with the drops. Pails, stone, a silver sun. Everything cut into with the gentle cadence of rolling thunder. 

_Am I allowed to be here?_

The thought made Murphy jolt and he dug his fingernails into his palms to drown it out — _useless, useless, useless_; treading on grounds_ unbidden _ — before he realized he’d spoken aloud. 

“As much as anybody else,” said Bellamy. He stopped a few feet short of the hedges dividing the roofs from the rest of the world. His brows were pinched in confusion? concern? when he turned back, (or more likely, Murphy thought, in an attempt to keep water out of them); “Last I checked, it’s a public space.” 

And Murphy nodded, slow, but somehow this fact did little to ease the condemning sense of impostor syndrome rising in his throat like bile. An oblique and largely erratic feeling he attributed to empty, humid nights in his apartment, counting how many hours he had left to sleep as each slipped by unnoticed. 

Behind Bellamy, New York’s skyline receded into the foggy evening and Murphy felt a pang of jealousy slide into his chest. The chorus of the city: trees, yellow taxis, neon screens that flashed in the dead of night — all neatly tucked into towering grey boxes, clean take-out containers from afar. That someone could take the ugly messiness of life and carve that chaos into some compartmentalized beauty delivered a weird envy to his gut. 

Why couldn’t someone do the same to him? 

“There’s nothing wrong with it, you know,” said Bellamy, coming to stand by his side. For a moment, Murphy had to pretend that the warmth left on his skin as Bellamy brushed by was not one of the nicest things he’d felt in weeks, and that the second it vanished he hadn’t felt a familiar cold twist through his bones and suddenly the warmth of the sun and cabin fires and the heat of summer had all been forgotten; John Murphy had never once been warm in his life, ever. “There is nothing wrong with the love of beauty.” 

The rain, satisfied with its work, had at last slid into a period of calm, perhaps a permanent one, and the silence that ensued felt heavy and empty all at once. The realm of two wandering visitors alone. 

“Right.” Murphy stared at the pavement, feeling unsteady enough to fall over if he didn’t focus a great deal of his concentration on staying grounded, here, in this moment. What was he supposed to say to that? He felt lame and unpoetic, and deliberately read like a book by a stranger. The chill must have been starting to get to him, because he shivered. “It’s just— calm, here. It’s different.” A touch of frustration rose in his tone, the intangible inability to convey how he felt (to make others _understand_, when he did dare to even try) all too familiar, but Bellamy was nodding as though he understood. 

(Perhaps this was why it didn’t feel uncomfortable when neither of them spoke again for some time, allowing the breeze to fall over them in waves. Something, somewhere, smelled like chamomile or maybe vines of honeysuckle, and Murphy closed his eyes as he grew drunk on each sense. A windchime rattled.)

― ♗ ―

Eventually, the cold became too much, and the museum would be closing soon, anyway, and _i should probably get going, it’s getting late_, and . . . 

And Bellamy cleared his throat, scratched the back of his neck. He looked tired all over again, but somehow fresher, newer. Happier. He was scribbling on a pocket-sized notepad from the inside of his jacket. “The exhibit next month is, uh, Dutch work,” he said, and he pressed the legal-yellow card into Murphy’s fingers. A series of ten navy digits stared up at him, innocuous and scribbled lazily, smoothly. “Sort of Baroque stuff, lots of bright tones on muted backgrounds, _Girl with a Pearl Earring_-type stuff, you know, . . . ”

Not for the first time, John smiled, crooked and real, because the realization dawned that Bellamy was _rambling_. To distract himself from giving him his phone number (his phone number!), to keep Murphy interested, to prolong their time. Whatever it was, it made Murphy smile and his heart thrummed at the prospect of a person meeting him and wanting to meet _again_. 

“But you should come back before then,” said Bellamy, and this sentence cemented it. _Proof of purchase, no turning back_. “When I’m off the clock, and the weather’s not . . . ” He gestured vaguely, as though the rain had been some terrible uninvited guest to ruin their fun, despite the goofy look on his face that was owed to every drop. Their eyes met and it was a dangerous, lovely thing. 

“I will,” said Murphy, and it was a promise he meant. His body was aching all over, his feet angry and his vision hard but he could not think of a time when he’d felt better. His heart strained eagerly against his ribcage, the atmosphere descended, and before he could take in another breath he heard himself dizzily ask, “Actually, do you want to get dinner tonight?”

Thunder rolled nearby. And then the storm was gone. 


End file.
